“Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy”
Written by Bill Vallely and Joe Menosky
Directed by John Bruno
Season 6, Episode 4
Production episode 224
Original air date: October 13, 1999
Stardate: unknown
Captain’s log. The EMH is giving a concert in the mess hall, singing “La donna è mobile” to a mostly rapt crowd. Tuvok starts crying, and then attacking the other people in the mess hall. The EMH diagnoses him as going through pon farr, and has Paris prepare a hypospray while the EMH continues to sing, albeit with new, Tuvok-focused lyrics. After he gives Tuvok the shot, he gets a standing ovation—
—at which point we realize the EMH is daydreaming. He’s expanded his program to include that ability, though Torres suggests that if he has that kind of downtime, he should just deactivate, which would save power. The EMH is also disappointed to learn that he is no longer assigned to an away team he was originally supposed to be part of.
He drafts a formal complaint, citing the crew’s rudeness to him (Janeway gives Paris a look when she reads that part), not acknowledging his sentience; he also expresses a desire for advancement, including programming him to be able to take over command of the ship in case of a catastrophic emergency.
Voyager has detected a nebula nearby that suddenly appeared on sensors. They don’t examine this for reasons passing understanding, which is too bad, because there’s a ship hiding inside it. The ship, which belongs to the Hierarchy, is studying Voyager to see if they’re worth the trouble to engage in battle. Since the ship isn’t in their database, and they can’t get a good scan of it, the Overlooker wants to move on. However, one of his subordinates, Phlox, thinks he can tap into a data conduit without being detected. He went over the Overlooker’s head to appeal directly to the Hierarchy, who approve the plan, to the Overlooker’s annoyance.
In the briefing room, a meeting about the away mission is punctuated by Torres, Seven, and Janeway all flirting with the EMH—it’s another daydream, which is interrupted by Janeway discussing the EMH’s complaint with him. She is intrigued by his notion of an Emergency Command Hologram, but they need him too much as chief medical officer to branch off his program like that. She does agree to forward the notion to Starfleet to work on when they get home.
Disappointed, the EMH walks the corridors, and is asked into Cargo Bay 2, where he’s congratulated by the crew for the launch of the ECH program, including a lingering kiss on the cheek from Seven.
In the nebula, Phlox is thrilled to have tapped into the EMH’s perceptions. He can now see everything the doctor sees—but only when he’s daydreaming, which Phlox doesn’t realize.
The Delta Flyer is off with the away team, and they send a mayday that a Borg sphere is attacking. An assimilation virus makes it past the biofilters and starts turning the bridge crew into Borg drones. The EMH tells the computer to activate the ECH and his uniform trim turns red, four pips appear on his collar, and he takes command, firing the photonic cannon (whatever that is) at the Borg sphere, which annihilates it.
In the nebula, Phlox is impressed with the EMH’s destruction of a Borg ship, though the Overlooker is concerned, as there’s been no sign of Borg activity in the area. However, the existence of the photonic cannon makes Voyager a worthwhile target, and Phlox recommends a type-3 stealth assault, which both the Overlooker and the Hierarchy agree to.
On Voyager’s bridge, Kim yanks the EMH out of his daydream to get him to focus on scanning the Delta Flyer, which safely lands on the planet. Everyone looks with concern at the EMH, who excuses himself to return to sickbay. But in the corridor, Chakotay approaches him and congratulates him on his work stopping the Borg. When the EMH asks for Chakotay’s location, the computer says he’s in his quarters.
Buy the Book
Fugitive Telemetry
Deeply concerned, the EMH reports to Torres, Kim, and Seven about what’s happening—the daydream program is now activating whether he wants it to or not. To prove the point, it activates again, as the EMH sees Seven and Torres fighting over getting to be alone with him, and then there’s a warp core breach that can only be stopped by entering the core and ejecting it, which no biological life form can survive, but the EMH can.
In the real world, the EMH is moving toward the core, but Torres, Kim, and Seven manage to stop him before he can do any damage. They drag him bodily back to sickbay (why they don’t just shut off his mobile emitter, which will send him back to sickbay as a hologram, is left as an exercise for the viewer).
They put him inside a force field in sickbay. He’s now cycling through multiple fantasies at once, unable to get out of the daydreaming program. They transfer his perceptions to the holodeck so they can see his fantasies—which Janeway is reluctant to authorize at first, as it’s an invasion of privacy, but she eventually agrees as it’s the best way to diagnose and fix the problem.
On the holodeck, we see the EMH painting a portrait of a nude Seven, and then in the mess hall trying and failing to convince Torres to go back to dating Paris instead of longing for the EMH, but the one that keeps recurring is him as the ECH saving the ship. That, they hypothesize, might provide an access point to fixing things, given how often it recurs.
Phlox realizes, to his horror, that he hasn’t been watching reality but rather the EMH’s fantasies, and that he has no idea how much of what he saw truly represents Voyager’s capabilities. Going into battle with insufficient information is the greatest sin a member of the Hierarchy can commit, and Phlox is now scared for his livelihood and his life.
Torres manages to disable the daydream program. The EMH is incredibly embarrassed to have had his fantasy life laid bare, and also to have so thoroughly incapacitated himself. Janeway forgives him, as there’s nothing wrong with daydreaming in the abstract. She also looks up precedents for a hologram taking command of a starship, but there are none, of course.
While working in sickbay, the EMH’s daydream program reactivates—this time it was done by Phlox, who is using the interface to talk directly to the doctor. It turns out that his invasion of the program is what caused it to malfunction. But Phlox has come to admire the EMH for his desire to be more than he is, a capability that the Hierarchy doesn’t really allow in Phlox’s own life. He not only warns the EMH about the impending invasion, but also provides a means to penetrate the Hierarchy ships’ cloaks. The EMH goes to the bridge to warn everyone—but they’re skeptical, as this sounds like yet another of his fantasies. However, the sensor adjustment the EMH provides to Kim actually works, and they detect three ships bearing down on them.
Phlox has suggested that the EMH play out the ECH fantasy in real life to bluff the Hierarchy ships into backing off, and also to maintain consistency with what Phlox initially reported to the Overlooker about Voyager’s command structure. This will have the dual benefit of keeping everyone out of a firefight, and also allowing Phlox to keep his job.
With Janeway remotely prompting him from astrometrics, the EMH changes his appearance to that of the ECH and pretends to be in command. He’s a bit more hesitant and more than a little over-the-top in the part, but he settles down, eventually convincing the Overlooker to back off when he orders Tuvok to activate the photonic cannon. Tuvok reluctantly pretends to do so, and the Hierarchy agrees with the Overlooker’s decision to back off—after all, the Borg couldn’t detect the photonic cannon, either, ahem.
Seven later summons the EMH to the mess hall, where there’s a surprise party for him: Janeway issues him a Starfleet Medal of Commendation. She also has changed her mind and authorizes a research project on board to develop the ECH.
There’s coffee in that nebula! At one point on the holodeck, Janeway sees one of the EMH’s fantasies, which is the captain congratulating the doctor on saving the ship, and the EMH replying: “All I ever wanted was to live up to my full potential, to hone all my skills, expand my abilities, to help the people I love.” This declaration visibly moves Janeway, and from that point forward, she’s determined to help the EMH live up to his potential rather than put up roadblocks as she had been doing.
Mr. Vulcan. Poor Tuvok gets the short end of the stick throughout: In the EMH’s fantasies, first he suffers pon farr in the middle of a concert, then he gets turned into a Borg and is downed by the EMH giving him a Vulcan neck pinch. Then in the real world, he has to pretend to arm a weapon that doesn’t exist, a course of action he is very obviously not thrilled with. (The contempt with which he says, “Activating the photon cannon—sir” is epic.)
Half and half. Torres is absolutely disgusted with the EMH’s fantasies regarding her, as well she should be. Indeed, the fact that she and Seven and Janeway were so objectified should have been dealt with much more severely…
Forever an ensign. While most of the crew is rapt with attention during the EMH’s daydream rendering of “La donna è mobile,” Kim is notably bored shitless during it.
Please state the nature of the medical emergency. The EMH actually handles his first command pretty well, all things considered…
Resistance is futile. After the EMH is given his medal, Seven kisses him on the cheek in a manner much more chaste than the kiss she gave him in his fantasy, and she very pointedly says that (a) the kiss is platonic and (b) she will not be posing for him any time soon.
What happens on the holodeck stays on the holodeck. Just as they did with Data in TNG’s “Phantasms,” the Voyager crew is able to hook up the EMH’s subconscious to the holodeck to play out his fantasies.
No sex, please, we’re Starfleet. During several of the EMH’s daydreams, Torres, Seven, and Janeway are all flirting with him. In the away-team briefing, Torres rubs his leg with her bare foot, Seven sends him text messages on his padd, and Janeway fakes an “old Academy injury” on her backside that she puts his hand on. It gets more ridiculous as the episode progresses…
Do it.
“Tuvok, I understand.
You are a Vulcan man.
You have just gone without
For seven years about.Paris, please find a way
To load a hypospray.
I will give you the sign.
Just aim for his behind.Hormones are raging, synapses blazing,
It’s all so very illogical! Illogical! Illogical!”
–The EMH’s new lyrics to “La donna è mobile.”
Welcome aboard. The three Hierarchy members we meet are played by Jay M. Leggett (Phlox), Googy Gress (the Overlooker), and Robert Greenberg (Devro). The names all come from the script—neither the characters nor the species are named in dialogue—and Leggett’s character name will be reused for the chief medical officer on Enterprise, played by John Billingsley.
Trivial matters: The title is a riff on the John LeCarré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which has also twice been adapted for the screen, on television by the BBC in 1979 (in which Sir Patrick Stewart played Karla), and on film in 2011 (in which both Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch starred).
The Hierarchy aliens will return in “The Void” and “Renaissance Man,” and are also part of Star Trek Online’s Delta Rising expansion.
This is John Bruno’s first time directing a Trek episode. Known primarily for his work as a visual effects artist, Bruno will return to direct “Fury.”
While it’s not mentioned directly, there was a situation where the EMH was, de facto, in charge of the ship during a catastrophic emergency, in “Basics, Part II,” where he and Suder were the only crew left on board.
We’ll see more of the ECH in the “Workforce” two-parter, “Renaissance Man,” and “Author Author.”
The notion of different holograms to perform shipboard functions other than medicine will be run with on Picard, where La Sirena has multiple emergency holograms (medical, engineering, navigation, hospitality, and tactical).
Set a course for home. “Computer, activate the ECH!” There’s a lot of DNA of past Trek episodes in this one. You’ve got bluffing an enemy with a fake weapon (“The Corbomite Maneuver,” “The Deadly Years”), you’ve got a crew member thrust into a brutal command situation (“The Arsenal of Freedom,” “The Emissary”), you’ve got a crew member’s fantasies laid bare on the holodeck (“Hollow Pursuits”), and you’ve got an AI acquiring the ability to dream (“Birthright I,” “Phantasms”).
And it’s still a lot of fun, mainly—as usual—because of Robert Picardo. He modulates perfectly from the subdued but intense desire to improve himself, the over-the-top confidence in his daydreams, and the panic when he’s thrust into a real command situation.
Part of the appeal of the EMH is the same appeal that Spock, Data, Worf, Odo, Seven, T’Pol, and Saru have: people who are unique on the ship (in the cases of Data, Odo, and the EMH, unique beyond the confines of the ship) trying to find their way. In the EMH’s case, it’s leavened by a lot of snottiness, but his desire remains fervent and very compelling to watch.
There are other delightful touches in this episode, from Tim Russ gamely having Tuvok be the victim of everything that goes wrong in the EMH’s fantasies to his sardonic acknowledgment of the ECH’s order to arm the nonexistent weapon; to Majel Barrett obviously having a grand old time with the computer’s very un-computer-like dialogue in the fantasy where the warp core is failing. (“Warning: warp core breach is a lot sooner than you think.” “Warning: last chance to be a hero, Doctor—get going!”)
I also want to sing the praises of comedian Jay Leggett, the hilariously named Googy Gress, and the not-the-guy-who-used-to-edit-DC’s-Trek-comic Robert Greenberg as the aliens, who come across as goofy versions of Doctor Who’s Sontarans. But Joe Menosky creates a nifty little combination of hidebound bureaucracy and conquering bastards, and the three actors do a great job of selling their culture and personalities. I particularly love Gress’ Overlooker, who’s pretty much playing the same role that Gary Cole played in Office Space…
There are two issues that hold this back from being as great an episode as it might be. One is the EMH fantasizing about Seven, Torres, and Janeway fighting over him, which was oogy two decades ago and has aged incredibly badly. Having said that, it’s completely in keeping with the personality of the person the EMH is modeled on, as we saw when Lewis Zimmerman appeared on DS9’s “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” But the three women’s reactions to it are way too subdued, especially Torres’. I can (barely) see Janeway taking a live-and-let-live attitude and Seven not truly giving much of a shit, but Torres isn’t the type to limit herself to stomping off the holodeck. This was a pretty yucky violation, and we should’ve seen a Leah Brahms-style reaction out of Torres, times twelve.
The other is that the issue of an AI in command of the ship does have precedent: Data. He’s third-in-command of the Enterprise, for crying out loud! And there is legal precedent for his rights, as established in TNG’s “The Measure of a Man.” This is the same problem in reverse that the first season of Picard had: synthetic life forms being banned, but holographic ones are okay for some reason, even though they’re both similar. Both are life forms that have been created and programmed by humans. If the EMH is as sentient as Data, then him being able to take command should be a thing.
Still, this is a fun episode, a great vehicle for one of the cast’s best, and introduces an interesting new Delta Quadrant species.
Warp factor rating: 7
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s latest book is All-the-Way House, which is part of the Systema Paradoxa series of novellas about cryptids. His tale, which spans three centuries, is about the origin of the legendary Jersey Devil, and is available to order.
Kind of a fun episode, but a bit too silly for me in some respects. Still, it gave us the Potato People! I love the Potato People! They’re Star Trek‘s most adorable villains.
The novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy takes its title in turn from an old English nursery rhyme (also the title source for the Irwin Shaw novel Rich Man, Poor Man), though the “Spy” part was John le Carré’s addition.
I wonder if Janeway’s embrace of the idea of an Emergency Command Hologram is what ultimately leads to her own incarnation as an Emergency Training Hologram in the upcoming animated series Star Trek: Prodigy.
They do look like Sontarans, don’t they? This episode was a lot of fun.
I’ve heard the Doctor’s song described as a Ponn F-aria
I love this episode for showing that you can do character development and still have a story that is fun and light. The story is silly (and I love the Hierarchy aliens! they have the perfect combination of goofy and still able to be a threat), but the EMH’s desire to improve himself is very real, and I think Kate Mulgrew did a great job transitioning from “this is all so ridiculous” to being genuinely moved by the Doc’s desire to better himself.
The stuff with the Doc imagining Torres, Janeway, and Seven is a little gross, but I didn’t find it over-the-top. These are, after all, his personal thoughts he is having- I found it far less creepy than the similar situation with Barclay, where he went out of his way to turn those fantasies into a holodeck scenario, rather than just keeping them in his own head, or with Geordi doing something similar with Leah Brahms. Given that the Doctor has lived out his entire life on Voyager, and that the Trek future seems real short on the kind of contemporary art that might provide him with, say, a celebrity crush, it makes sense to a certain extent. That said, one scene of the Voyager ladies fawning over him would have been more than enough, and the rest of the scenes felt gratuitous.
Also, I will shamelessly plug my belief that if we are going to have holographic crew members, they absolutely need an Emergency Legal Hologram on these ships.
I think this is not only one of Voyager‘s best episodes, but one of the franchise’s finest hours. It proves that when done right, Star Trek can indeed master comedy. It is of course, a shining example of Picardo’s immense talent but a lot of the cast gets fun and funny stuff to do as well. Ironically, my favorite scene in the episode is the briefing room scene, which our reviewer finds problematic. It’s a ridiculous and over-the-top fantasy. In that context I didn’t see anything wrong with it. Anyway, Picardo, Mulgrew, Ryan, Dawson are amazing in the scene and I love Paris’ look of disgust when Janeway puts the EMH’s hand on her backside. The new Hierarchy aliens are also a nice new creation for this series. These “potato heads” remind me of the Pakleds a bit. And their makeup and costume design is excellent. I’m glad this is not the last we see of them. And of course this episode has a lot of heart with the EMH saving the day and the Captain getting a better understanding of him and his desires. This is a 10 out of 10 for me.
Trivial Matters: the story originally focused on Neelix and his daydreams but someone made the wise decision to change the focus to the EMH.
Not sure I can agree regarding the objectifying classification, if only because these are literally just daydreams. Torres has a right to be repulsed, but calling the Doctor’s inner thoughts a violation just because they happen to be on display comes off as condemning any romantic fantasy had by anyone.
This isn’t like Barclay, who made actual holodeck programs based on his fantasies. These fantasies are only partially in the Doctor’s control, and he’s not trying to show them off or deliberately thinking about Torres, Seven, or Janeway when he’s having them.
The only violation was having one’s fantasies laid bare, so to speak, for the world to see.
Yeah, not seeing how you condemn someone’s daydreams as a violation. Apologies to all of the attractive women in my life, but that makes no sense. The only difference here is that the EMH is a computer program and you can actually view the daydreams.
Is anybody going to mention the comedy gold when fantasy-Torres tries to convince the EMH to be with her, and the EMH says, “What about him?” And the camera cuts to Paris sitting by himself, awkwardly smiling and waving. His goofy look had me cracking up.
Data is not only third-in-command of the Enterprise he commanded the Sutherland during Redemption, Part II. This seems to confirm that the Federation sees holographic and positronic AIs as fundamentally different types of beings. This may be because holograms are a common, off-the-shelf technology in the Alpha Quadrant that can mostly be reprogrammed at will, whereas positronic androids like Data are self-contained, independent, and can only be created using the Soong family secret sauce.
@8: “Soong family secret sauce” – Love that!
@8/Crœsos:
That actually makes sense to me… treating a being like Data, who was designed to be an independent and sentient entity from the get-go, differently from a hologram like the Doctor who is (at least at the beginning) an emergency extension of the ship’s computer, not all that different from a holodeck program.
Collapsing all forms of AI into a single category belies the complexity of the issue and the variety of AIs available in the 24th century. We wouldn’t say “they let human primates command a starship, so why would it be an issue for this orangutan to do it?”
(Of course, that gets into a larger question as to why the ships’ computers, which were clearly capable of generating sentient consciousnesses like the Doctor or Moriarty whenever a crew member said “hey computer, generate me a fully self-aware, conscious, and sentient being,” weren’t themselves treated a bit more like partners rather than tools, but that’s a bit more metaphysics than Voyager seems up to. And I won’t dispute at all that Trek is really inconsistent in how its societies deal with artificial intelligence, which seems odd when you consider that they’ve had AIs around in various configurations for 100+ years.)
Fair points with regard to what’s a violation, but I still think Torres’s reaction was way understated by her own lights. She should’ve been ripshit about it.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I didn’t think the Doctor was declared sentient until Author Author next season. None the less, artificial life forms having command is a thing in Data’s case so, it should be possible for the Doctor to add Command subroutines to his programming. Medical personnel can pick up command to advance in rank as Dr. Crusher and Counselor Troi both have done it already. The hero of the ship is a common daydream ala Marty Stu but, I still find the ones with Cpt. Janeway, Seven, and Lt. Torres cringe inducing and icky. Someone female really needs to explain why this would make them uncomfortable even if no one normally gets to see the fantasies in your head. I’m not sure anyone ever explains their reasons for they’re reactions to the Doctor and it would help him learn more about emotions. Zimmerman is certainly no help in that regard.
Going to have to agree with the others here about the Seven, Torres and Janeway fantasies. Yes, the Doc was objectifying them, but these are daydreams. Can anyone truly state they have never objectified a stranger, friend, colleague or celebrity within a fantasy? If so, they would be rare among us humans because such fantasies are part of the human condition. As fantasies they were not meant for public display.
As long he the doctor does not act on these fantasies in real life, (such as with Barkly on the holodeck), and does not allow them to affect his interactions with the real objects of such fantasies, (such as Geordi with Braum), then they are off limits to other people.
To have Janeway interject a proscription would be tantamount to having ‘thought police’. That’s would be repulsive now and in any future context.
@11/krad: Perhaps Torres’ reaction was a bit subdued in keeping with the lighter tone of this episode.
@12/Robin M.: If you think these fantasies of the Doctor regarding his female colleagues are icky you probably would want to remain ignorant of what the average straight male fantasizes about regarding women (being gay I’m off the hook!). They make the Doctor’s fantasies seem very tame by comparison. But I do reject your notion of someone female telling the Doctor how or how not to fantasize because that gets into thought police territory.
Torres’ reaction is probably due to her remembering her own fantasies about her coworkers, which given her temper probably involved dismemberment and blowing them all out the airlock.
The Doctor’s desire to advance and grow is understandable and sympathetic- but this isn’t the first time he’s messed about with his own programming, and it’s not the first time it’s gone wrong. Granted, at least he didn’t split off an evil personality that assaulted people this time, but perhaps there’s a cautionary tale about monkeying about with one’s own consciousness here.
Who would have thought this episode would serve as a basis for bringing Janeway into an animated series?
@10/elcinco: “Of course, that gets into a larger question as to why the ships’ computers, which were clearly capable of generating sentient consciousnesses like the Doctor or Moriarty whenever a crew member said “hey computer, generate me a fully self-aware, conscious, and sentient being,” weren’t themselves treated a bit more like partners rather than tools, but that’s a bit more metaphysics than Voyager seems up to.”
No metaphysics required — there’s a straightforward scientific explanation. Consciousness is not merely a matter of how big a computer is, but what type of organization it has. A conscious neural network is a specific type of architecture that has multiple emergent layers of organization arising out of one another, feeding back on one another recursively, so that it’s aware of its own activity and able to alter its own state.
A really big, powerful computer without that kind of architecture won’t be a conscious being; it’ll just be a really humongous, superfast abacus. But if it’s powerful enough, it can use all that brute-force number crunching to simulate a neural network within itself. So the simulation might be conscious and self-aware even though the computer running it is not.
And that’s not really any stranger than the human brain being conscious and self-aware even though the meat and tissues of the human body that grew that brain within it are not.
@12/Robin M: “Someone female really needs to explain why this would make them uncomfortable even if no one normally gets to see the fantasies in your head.”
Women objectify and fantasize about men too; I’ve occasionally heard women publicly discuss their fantasies about men in ribald terms that made me a little embarrassed. And of course, many people fantasize about people of their own sex. The value of fantasies is that they aren’t real, and that they’re private. So we can be completely selfish in our fantasies while being more considerate and responsible in real life. Many of us have fantasies we’d never want to share with their subjects, because it would embarrass both them and us.
The problem is that too much storytelling in the past has favored the male perspective, so the fantasies we got to see were one-sided and perpetuated that imbalance. That’s certainly been true of Voyager ever since they put the first catsuit on Seven.
It doesn’t solve the problem of Torres’s under-reaction, but if you want an excuse to handwave away the “females fighting over the EMH” fantasies, it could be put down to the daydreaming subroutine being faulty. To draw an analogy with humans, we may have those fantasies from time to time, but we can turn them off when we need to focus. The EMH’s daydreaming algorithm failed in a way that made it lose its off switch.
Personally, I still found them a bit gratuitous and dragged the episode down. It’s a shame, because otherwise this is very good. I’m especially fond of the EMH/Tuvok interactions in the daydreams, and the Hierarchy really work well as a new faction to be introduced.
Perhaps Torres is remembering that one of the last times people’s fantasies started coming to life (in “Persistence of Vision”), she hooked up with Fantasy!Chakotay, and decided not to be too judgmental of someone else doing the exact same thing. It’s a little out of character, sure, but maybe she had a moment of empathy.
The scene where the Doctor takes command of the ship and blows away the Borg is a very strong contender for the funniest scene ever shot for Star Trek (challenged by “I protest, I am not a merry man!”, most of Deja Q and maybe Sisko punching out Q). The command pips spontaneously materialising on the Doctor’s collar made me howl with laughter (“nice touch,” as Janeway says).
The aliens are clearly ripped from the Sontarans (and Trek has form on tapping Doctor Who for ideas before), but their demeanour is somewhat different, and in fact the later Sontarans from the newer incarnation of the show seem to be more like the Hierarchy in behaviour, so fair’s fair.
He’s expanded his program to include that ability, though Torres suggests that if he has that kind of downtime, he should just deactivate, which would save power.
This is an otherwise fine episode for the reasons you stated, but this is a serious “what the hell” moment on her part– fine, Torres, if you want to play that game let’s put you in a medically induced coma unless we need you in Engineering, should help us save on rations and oxygen. Plus they never really worry about power consumption anyway, so treating the Doctor like a piece of equipment and worrying about power are both concepts beaming in from season 1.
It also seems seriously they’re openly discussing/deriding the Doctor’s formal request on the bridge, which on a ship of 150 people is tantamount to doing it in front of everybody– now the Doctor, his request, and that the Captain doesn’t think much of it are all just public information. I’m skeptical of the Doctor’s demands on the merits, but it barely changes the episode if Janeway appropriately addresses this issue in private. So it seems like they’re stacking the deck a bit here by making the regulars treat the Doctor worse than they usually do.
@23 – Well said. Plus, didn’t we already get an episode where Janeway changed her way of thinking about the Doctor? Seems she hit the reset button.
“EMH fantasizing about Seven, Torres, and Janeway fighting over him…”
Arguably there is platonic precedent for this: In “Real Life” the original family simulation has the Doctor’s kids arguing over who gets to greet him when he comes home. Torres sharply critiqued their behavior as saccharine and unrealistic, hence her edits to that simulation. I’m not going to comment on the fantasies in “Tinker…” but I do notice that the Doctor has fantasized about being argued over before. Which–although this doesn’t invalidate Keith’s criticisms–perhaps is a natural wish on the part of someone who feels like an outsider.
I would like to sing the praises of Tor dot com’s production editor Sarah Tolf for picking the perfect top image for this rewatch entry. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
That is an awesome screen grab at the very top and all of the images chosen are great! Good job Sarah!
So much to adore in this one!
“It was a platonic gesture. Don’t expect me to pose for you” is a treasure. Jeri Ryan’s delivery is impeccable – What a fantastic actress.
@28, agreed. I really appreciated Jeri Ryan just on the strength of this show. But I REALLY appreciated her once I saw her on other things, especially Leverage. She plays this part to perfection, but has tons of range– she’s completely different, yet just as great as Trish. Same thing for Picardo, actually, who even made “I’m the devil OF TIME” work on UPN’s preposterous and justly forgotten 7 Days. It’s almost criminal how talented these two are, and when you pair them you almost can’t fail.
“We like to think that fantasies and daydreams come from someplace else. Another land. They slip into our minds and whisper about things we never imagined.”
Utterly brilliant: Season 6 is actually started pretty strongly. It’s got humour in spades, with a rapid-fire delivery of one-liners and visual gags. (I love Devro’s panicked reaction to being caught eavesdropping, the way Janeway keeps looking at Paris when mentioning people being rude, the Doctor momentarily thinking Neelix is sending him flirty messages…) But it’s got heart as well, best summed up in the sequence of the characters viewing the Doctor’s fantasy: Janeway and Seven are trying their best to stay professional, Kim can’t stop smirking and Torres looks as though she wants to beat him to death. But then Janeway stops and sees the Doctor’s heartfelt speech about how he wanted to help Voyager and realises there might be something more than ego behind it.
The Hierarchy have to be one of the cutest race of marauding aliens invaders ever. I actually found they looked a bit like the Malons, enough that I actually got confused during a later reappearance! And it all ends with the Doctor saving the day with a bluff that would have made Kirk proud. (He might as well have told them to use the corbomite cannon!)
First time we see the Doctor in the captain’s chair. He fantasises about all the women in the main cast fighting over him and yet somehow Paris is the one with the reputation.
Same thing for Picardo, actually, who even made “I’m the devil OF TIME” work on UPN’s preposterous and justly forgotten 7 Days. It’s almost criminal how talented these two are, and when you pair them you almost can’t fail.
Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten about his guest stint in that episode.
Man, 7 Days…that’s going way, way back, isn’t it?
And Picardo’s range can’t be denied, either. I remember it took quite a while to get used to him as Woolsey on Stargate, but by the end I’d stopped wondering why the Doctor was walking through a Gate.
Re Turning off the Doctor’s mobile emitter rather than dragging him away from the warp core, Seven suggests that and Torres says it would damage his matrix to deactivate him.
Actually, one thing that did puzzle me was the Doctor being constrained by a forcefield when previously he could just walk through them. I can only assume that he wasn’t aware enough of his surroundings to make himself intangible.
@32/cap-mjb: All force fields are not created equal. The Doctor can walk through sickbay quarantine fields because he and they are designed to allow that. I would assume that a different type or setting of field was used to hold in the Doctor.
Also, his mobile emitter is a solid object and couldn’t pass through a force field the same way as his “holographic” body. Though I’m not sure if they always remembered that.
@31: Seven Days was fortunately cancelled (May 2001) just before events in the real world would break its premise badly.
@34/AndyLove: I always found Seven Days‘s premise implausible. If disasters awful enough to justify traveling back in time to prevent them happened with such weekly regularity in the show’s universe, then how did the world ever survive long enough for the time machine to be built? Alternatively, why did they not begin to happen regularly until there was a time machine in place to undo them?
But then, I always find it contrived that the biggest catastrophes in series fiction always seem to happen when there’s a convenient time-travel mechanism in place to allow preventing them, as in TNG: “Cause and Effect” or DS9: “Visionary.”
@35: Some of the disasters that the Seven Days team prevent are things that do happen from time to time (executions of the innocent, murders, etc.) without causing the end of the world Presumably, once you’ve proven that the thing works, it becomes tempting to use it for less-than-world-shattering tasks.
Theoretically, inside the sickbay, the Doctor shouldn’t even need to walk through forcefields. I’d expect him to be able to port about, I Dream of Jeannie style. Of course, given his original purpose, I’d also expect him to have the ability to manifest dupes of himself which, even if not directed by his full consciousness, could undertake basic surgical and lifesaving procedures, and to be able to manifest at least basic medical tools. (Whether a holographic dermal regenerator is capable of functioning is another point, but certainly a simulated doctor made of hard light should be able to produce a functional laser scalpel).
But he’s an early model, and some of those effects would probably be expensive and/or cheesy.
@34 and @35:
Yeah, and while the premise was a decent driving engine, it could also only go so far before becoming repetitive. I’m amazed it lasted as long as it did.
One thing I find amusing is that after an episode where yet another way to gain access to the EMH is a main part of the plot, Janeway’s takeaway is “Maybe it would be a good idea for the EMH to be able to control the ship.”
If the ways that humans can be mind controlled is X and the ways a hologram can be mind controlled is Y, they you’ve just increased the ways to take over the ship to X+Y, which is obviously greater than either. But, seeing how oftern and how easily Federation ships are taken over, it’s probably not something that would even cross their minds. They’d just chalk it up to business as usual.
I feel like 7 Janeway and Torres fighting over the Doctor would be gross if it was real but it was a fantasy, Torres has the right to be embrassed that it was made public but to be angry? i don’t know that just doesn’t seem reasonable given the circumstances.
@26 … it’s the perfect Han Solo “power” point.
Bwahahahahahahaha,
@38/Mr. Magic: “Yeah, and while the premise was a decent driving engine, it could also only go so far before becoming repetitive.”
There have been a number of TV shows over the years based on premises that I felt would have been more sensible as movies than as ongoing episodic series. Remember UPN’s Nowhere Man? I felt it would’ve worked well as a movie or miniseries, but as a weekly series it was ridiculous, because telling stories in the vein of The Prisoner in the context of a town-of-the-week format like The Fugitive pretty much required the vast majority of the population of the United States to be participants in the conspiracy against this one guy.
@42 – “required the vast majority of the population of the United States to be participants in the conspiracy against this one guy.”
That’s just what they want you to think.
I cherish the notion that Chief Engineer Torres storms out of the holodeck not only because she doesn’t want to risk permanent damage to the ship’s finest entertainment venue but because this, this is the sort of RAGE you don’t waste in a single outburst – this is a RAGE you save up until you’ve had time to plan a suitably intensive payback!
As I’ve said before in the Basics rewatch, the whole concept of the ECH was likely being considered for a while. The EMH is too valuable of a resource to be confined to sickbay. The mobile emitter gave him a chance to break that and participate in other activities throughout the ship. Plus, there’s always the old precedent that the ship’s CMO has the authority to declare a ship’s captain mentally unfit for duty, making the CMO the de-facto officer with the highest authority on any Starfleet vessel, a trend dating back to the original show.
So, of course they had to eventually make a show about giving the CMO the opportunity to actually command. Voyager pulls it off it in a clever, smart and funny way. Comedy is usually harder to pull off than drama, but the EMH is uniquely suited for this kind of story. It works well. Making the whole thing a private holodeck fantasy where he gets to play the way he wish he’d treat those people in a way he’d never do so in reality is even more effective than Barclay’s somewhat sedate swordsman fantasies from Hollow Pursuits. But it backfires in the usual way when the content spills out into reality.
And then we get the trifecta of bureaucratic aliens, one of the funniest creations in a while, proving that even this late on Voyager’s run, despite season 6’s feeling of growing stale, the writers can still find new interesting things to tell in the Delta Quadrant. Easily the funniest banter alien characters since Quark’s Ferengi mashup to rescue Ishka in The Magnificent Ferengi two years before.
@krad: I always had a bit of an issue as to how Data earned that second officer position on the Enterprise back on TNG‘s first season, since other than Riker and Picard, we don’t get a lot of background on these characters. I assume there is some tie-in fiction that dealt with it, but I always felt it was a missed opportunity that the show never told us how Data got that position (and no, his speech about charting the usual Starfleet path to Lore doesn’t count). Imagine if Data had merely started as the ops/science officer and didn’t properly earn the third-in-command privilege until after the events of Redemption-part II, which would have proved his command capacity (that episode could have also done without lieutenant grumpy pants being distrustful of Data for little reason).
@45/Eduardo: “Plus, there’s always the old precedent that the ship’s CMO has the authority to declare a ship’s captain mentally unfit for duty, making the CMO the de-facto officer with the highest authority on any Starfleet vessel, a trend dating back to the original show.”
That authority only exists with regard to the health of the captain and crew, so that’s not really a valid way of putting it. The CMO can declare that the captain needs to be relieved of duty, but the CMO does not then become the captain; nor does the CMO have any power to override the captain’s decisions on non-medical matters.
“Imagine if Data had merely started as the ops/science officer and didn’t properly earn the third-in-command privilege until after the events of Redemption-part II, which would have proved his command capacity”
Except it makes sense for the operations manager to be third in command, because the operations manager is responsible for allocating personnel and ship resources to the execution of the tasks ordered by the captain and first officer. Basically, if the captain is the director (the one who decides what to do) and the first officer is the producer (the one who determines how to do it), then the ops manager is the first assistant director (the one in charge of the step-by-step work of carrying it out). So it makes a lot more sense for the ops manager to be third-in-command than a science officer or engineer or helm officer.
“that episode could have also done without lieutenant grumpy pants being distrustful of Data for little reason”
The reason was that he didn’t accept an android’s personhood, the same kind of anti-AI prejudice we’ve seen intermittently from “The Measure of a Man” through Picard.
@45 EJ and @46 CLB: About “Redemption part II” I didn’t mind the scene where the crew member object’s to Data’s command, only because it was so satisfying (to my roommates and me, at least) when Data evenly replied, “I understand your concern. Request denied.”
On the other hand, one does wonder how someone predisposed to that attitude managed a career in Starfleet. But then again, there was a similar scene in “Balance of Terror,” where Kirk checks a crew member’s prejudice against Spock. Star Trek always has struggled to balance between that “the human race becomes perfect and tolerant” concept, and the writers’ wish to hold a mirror to our own world.
@46/Christopher: I wasn’t implying that the CMO was going to take charge in the event of the captain or other commanding officer stepping down. I merely stated that the CMO has always been an officer with a high degree of authority, even if only limited to medical and other diagnostic matters. Then again, it is possible for the CMO to still be in charge, as long as no other ranking command officer is available. We’ve seen Beverly lead the Enterprise during the Descent two parter, after all.
As for the ops position, admittedly I never thought of it as a first AD parallel, but I can see the reasoning.
And as for the Data command subplot on Redemption, I don’t have a problem with the plot itself. Data carries on brilliantly throughout, as @47 brought up with that memorable exchange. My only issue is with the portrayal of the other character. I understand his issues with Data come from a general mistrust of synths, as seen later on Picard. I just thought he could have been better written, that’s all. And I just think that in plot in general would have been better served had it come far earlier on TNG, preferably even before Measure of a Man.
@48/Eduardo: Authority over medical matters doesn’t represent a higher authority, just a different one. It’s not a ladder. Different officers on the same ship can have authority over different matters. For instance, if a commodore or admiral makes a ship their command post for a specific mission, the flag officer is in command of the mission, responsible for making the decisions specific to it, whereas the captain is still in command of the ship, responsible for the decisions pertaining only to the ship and not to the mission. (This is how they should have done it in ST:TMP, instead of having Kirk kick out Decker and get demoted to captain.)
And Beverly, we were explicitly told, was able to take command because she’d applied for and completed command officer’s training, which is not automatic for a medical officer (as we saw with Troi).
“And I just think that in plot in general would have been better served had it come far earlier on TNG, preferably even before Measure of a Man.”
On the contrary — “The Measure of a Man” showed that a single legal decision doesn’t erase all prejudice. We know that Data won the right to be considered a sentient being when he was first admitted to Starfleet Academy, yet over a quarter-century later, Maddox still saw him as a mere mechanism and attempted to reverse the previous legal ruling. The fight never ends with the first court decision, or even the second. The fact that Maddox existed guaranteed that there would be a Hobson and others like him.
I actually quite enjoyed Seven Days despite its premise getting stretched rather thin. Definitely a bit of nostalgia welling up here.
It’s one thing for the Doctor to daydream every female cast member in love with him – the argument is made that it’s in character – and another thing for us to watch it. And the actors were performing it, too – unless a supply of body doubles, mannequins, and Emergency Objectification Holograms was, so to speak, laid on. It doesn’t really help it that many actors have done worse things for money, one way or another, before getting roles like these. Certainly we should be leaving that behind now. Toned down with the physicality, it could be funny without being humiliating.
On the other hand, Star Trek characters usually are portrayed as not physically selfconscious, unless it is funny, and not offended by symbolic transgressions such as racial language since, I suppose, they have the sense of security that their community has very little tolerance for actual disrespect. I just am not sure how far that can go before it becomes an excuse.
On a minor point, possibly contradicting what I’ve just said, I think Torres has physically maimed one or more colleagues in Engineering over professional differences of opinion… most of that was some time ago, but you do know when she’s angry.
@51
Well, have any of the actors said it was humiliating? Or did they have a great time making it? Because it’s quite possible they had a bawdy sense of humor concerning the material.
@33/CLB: The Doctor’s in sickbay at the time and visibly not wearing the mobile emitter. (The visuals also show him “bouncing” off the forcefield like a solid object.) There may be a way to recalibrate them to hold him though, as you say.
Re medical officers in the chain of command, Troi was able to take command of the ship in the absence of more senior officers on the bridge in “Disaster” despite not having any command training. So it probably nudges someone up the pecking order, and qualifies them for regular bridge duty as we saw in “Thine Own Self” and “Genesis”, but may not be an absolute requirement.
Which brings me onto my other random thought. I wouldn’t really say the Doctor’s in charge of the ship in “Basics” (Seska and Cullah are in charge of the ship – at most, the Doctor’s in charge of the members of the old crew left on the ship), he is explicitly given command in “One” when the majority of the crew are in stasis.
@53/cap-mjb: “Disaster” was, as the name makes explicit, an exceptional crisis situation. Before the disaster struck, the bridge was under the command of Lt. Monroe even though Troi outranked her, proving that Troi was not normally in the chain of commmand. “Thine Own Self” made it explicit that she had to take a special test to qualify as a command officer. I don’t see how it could be any more explicit that it is not an automatic privilege of a medical officer.
And “One” is the same deal. It’s an obviously exceptional case where a medical officer is required to take command by default, which is not remotely the same thing as having command authority as a matter of routine. An exception is not a rule.
@54/CLB: In order to be in command even during a crisis situation, Troi would have to have at least some command qualifications. You had two command track ensigns on the bridge plus O’Brien (who was still costumed as a lieutenant as per the rank established in “Where Silence Has Lease”, even though “Family” had apparently retconned him as a non-com, and has enough seniority to be left in command of DS9 in “Emissary”) and at the very least she had more qualification to command the ship than them.
Sorry, I conflated two thoughts there and possibly didn’t make it clear. I wasn’t saying that “One” provided a precedent for a medical officer to be left in command, I was saying it provided a precedent for a hologram to be left in command.
@55/cap-mjb: “In order to be in command even during a crisis situation, Troi would have to have at least some command qualifications.”
Yes, obviously — she has lieutenant commander rank. It’s got “command” right there in the middle. As a member of the rank structure, she is obligated to take command in an exceptional situation where there are no more senior officers or authorized command personnel present. But that is an emergency fallback, and therefore says nothing about a medical officer’s role in normal circumstances, which is my point. As I’ve said, TNG made it very explicit that Deanna was not automatically a member of the chain of command. She was forced to fill in during an emergency in “Disaster,” and later in “Thine Own Self,” she chose to earn the qualifications that would let her do it officially as a matter of routine.
Troi is in an interesting position. As part of the ship’s medical staff, I would expect her to be a “staff officer” with no chance of being in command under any circumstances. But she also has duties in advising Picard during confrontations with other vessels, which is at least potentially some sort of “line” duty. Perhaps her hybrid duties are why junior officers looked to her during “Disaster” and why she was permitted to take the command exam?
@57/AndyLove: Starfleet isn’t as strict about rank and assignments as Earth militaries, and it makes sense that it wouldn’t be. For one thing, it’s supposedly a multispecies service and thus could reflect the practices of non-human militaries. For another, it’s a space service, and people in space generally have to be cross-trained and able to do a variety of jobs as necessary. Roddenberry said at various points that he saw Starfleet ranks more as job descriptions than tiers in a rigid hierarchy, and also that he didn’t consider the distinction between officers and enlisted personnel meaningful because everyone qualified for space service had to be highly trained and skilled, and thus they were effectively all officers.
Also, particularly in the TNG era, there was an attitude that in Starfleet, the process of learning never ended. Officers weren’t trapped in rigid roles, but were expected to continue broadening their horizons and skills in whatever direction inspired them. That idea showed up recently in Lower Decks, when Rutherford decided to transfer between departments and try out new responsibilities, and his superiors all supported him and encouraged him to try new things and find his true passion. It was played for comedy, of course, but it captured the spirit of Starfleet well. It’s not about hierarchy and rules as ends in themselves, restricting people’s choices. It’s about helping people grow and enrich themselves throughout their careers.
@58: Agreed.
@52/James: Robert Picardo has said this was the episode he had the most fun making. Not sure how the other actors felt about it but Garrett Wang and Robert Duncan McNeill are doing a Voyager podcast currently and once they get up to this episode they’ll give their personal thoughts on it and maybe share what their fellow cast members felt as well. It would be nice to get the female actors’ perspective if they enjoyed the making of the episode or were embarrassed.
Reflecting, I may have let my need to perform virtue signalling get in the way of acknowledging that in the altogether, I mean overall, this story is funny, and is fun.
It should’ve been a clue to the Hierarchy member who was observing the Doctor that he wasn’t seeing through the Doctor’s eyes because he could actually see the Doctor. So unless the Doctor was constantly looking into a mirror…
Also, Janeway wasn’t much help talking the Doctor through his Command situation with the Hierarchy. I think she said maybe 2 things, and one of them was “Don’t improvise”. And then he was almost immediately required to improvise.
@62/Quasarmodo: “It should’ve been a clue to the Hierarchy member who was observing the Doctor that he wasn’t seeing through the Doctor’s eyes because he could actually see the Doctor. So unless the Doctor was constantly looking into a mirror…”
I’d say it’s the other way around. Since these were the Doctor’s daydreams and existed purely in his mind, they should have been exclusively from his POV.
I think it’s just the usual TV conceit of monitor footage being from impossible angles, e.g. security camera footage having cuts and camera movements. There are a ton of episodes out there where scenes that are supposedly from a character’s own first-person POV have the character in the shot, because they’re passing off stock footage as a character’s memories, or because the director didn’t have the time to reshoot a scene from the character’s first-person POV and just had to settle for the regular shot compositions, or whatever.
So, how did Janeway pin that medal on the EMH? His uniform’s not really cloth, after all.
And since Seven Days has come up here in the comments, I only saw an episode or two of that series, and have always wondered: when the guy jumped back in time for each episode, where was the week-younger version of him, and what became of him? Were alternate versions of him growing in number by one every week, like the doppelgangers of the protagonist in the movie Primer?
@64/terracinque: Trek “holograms” use shaped forcefields that mimic the behavior and tactile qualities of real materials, to make the illusion convincing.
Really, if you think about it, all physical substance is a force-field effect. “Solid” objects are made up of atoms and molecules with a ton of empty space between them. The reason an object feels solid to the touch is because its surface electrons repel our surface electrons, so the only things that are actually touching to begin with are fields of electromagnetic force. So in theory, there’s no reason a holodeck’s force fields couldn’t behave and feel exactly like real solid objects.
As for Seven Days, I don’t recall it really addressing that question. I think the previous version of himself disappeared when he came back, but I don’t think they really delved into it. Like most TV/movie depictions of time travel, it didn’t really hold up to analysis.
I just watched this episode last night and not once did I find anything wrong or objectionable about the Torres, Janeway, Seven scenes the writer is talking about. All in good fun. Relax.
I really love this episode, it’s one of my favorites.
That said, the creepy scenes with the Doctor’s love interests pull it down a bit. It’s more about what the writers thought would be funny and worth filming, and what they think audiences will find funny. Even when that’s accurate (as seen in some comments), it’s very directional — people who haven’t had to worry about having their work environment influenced by how much their colleagues want to sleep with them will find it easier to laugh. And while people are free to have daydreams in the privacy of their minds, it’s still rather unprofessional to daydream about people you are currently in a meeting with fighting to have sex with you. Wait for your break!
I agree with those who say the Doctor wasn’t violating anyone simply by having private fantasies. I also agree with KRAD that there’s no way in hell Torres shouldn’t have lost her temper over them. You don’t actually have to be violated to feel violated, and Torres isn’t the most chill person on the ship.
This was a really fun episode with superb pacing and comedy. I have to say that the nude painting scene was pretty awful and problematic. To have Kim there watching a fellow crew member naked was just… well… that was icky and a real violation. It also leads to the awkwardness of showing portraits of Seven sans breasts, which only makes sense from a UPN censor’s perspective.
The thing that bugged me logistically is that our adversaries always saw his day dreams from camera’s perspective. If they’d tapped into the EMH, shouldn’t it have been point of view? That would have been my first clue that I’m not seeing the reality as perceived by the subject. Probably done for cost savings, but it tripped me up.
But it’s a fun ride and opening opera performance was brilliantly acted, shot, and written.
It’s only a violation if the society, or the individual being seen, has a nudity taboo. We’ve seen in Lower Decks that crewmembers shower together regardless of gender. And Seven hardly seems likely to care about human hangups regarding bodily exposure.
As for the EMH’s point of view, keep in mind that he doesn’t actually have eyes; his body is a shaped force field construct, and his consciousness actually resides in the sickbay computer mainframe, or in the mobile emitter. It seems likely that he actually perceives his environment through the ship’s internal sensors and could “see” from any vantage.